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 there that morning. Carefully taking the blue image from its grass wrapgings, he held it in one hand, the amulet in the other, as though he half expected some magic to happen through their combined power. Though he held them for a long time, nothing at all did happen, and finally, what with the heat and the utter stillness of everything, he fell asleep, quite without meaning to. He woke with a start to find that the blue figure had slipped from his hand and lay on the deck with its head broken cleanly from its shoulders. Fen gazed at it silently, unable at first to believe that the precious thing which had come so mysteriously in at the port-hole now lay in two pieces, broken, and that he had broken it. Then he buried his face suddenly in the pillow and sobbed bitterly.

A strong arm came round him all at once, and, before he quite realized it, he found himself hiding his face on a